Modern society demands substantial energy and fuel to supply both essential needs and consumer wants. Conventional petroleum and fuel sources have proven to be a volatile resource in terms of international energy dependencies, real and perceived environmental issues, and an unknown limited supply. Alternative sources of suitable fuels has led to a wide variety of efforts such as corn to ethanol processes, biomass to liquid processes, algae to biodiesel processes, and a number of methane conversion processes. Each of these and other current alternatives have both benefits and drawbacks. For example, corn-based fuels have the effect of also detrimentally affecting prices and supply of food sources. There are also debates regarding the net efficiencies of such processes. Biodiesel derived from algae is interesting in that reduced carbon emissions are involved and algae is a renewable resource. However, as with corn-based processes, algae require vast amounts of land to cultivate in practical volumes. Similarly, methane to liquid fuels processes such as the Fischer-Tropsch process have seen commercial use. However, these processes can be difficult to control and often suffer from catalyst deactivation. These processes are also only economical at very large volume scales which require large initial capital investments. Therefore, none of the existing technologies provides scalable, inexpensive and reliable processes for forming hydrocarbon fuels, nor can they be deployed economically at low volume biogas sources.